Cheap food

Hola!  It’s almost the end of Friday, but a tip you shall have!!

I just started a new job (yay!), which will likely lead to more food postings (I’m now in the grocery business and work with quite a few folks who love to cook and eat, so I’m anticipating a lot of idea sharing), but has also led to me being more or less exhausted.  I’m expecting this to sort itself out in the next few weeks, but for now, posting may be thin and sporadic.

Friday, it’s Friday!

I’m afraid that today’s post title (is it a headline?) may lead some here looking for a way to use cornmeal in pizza crust.  Or maybe as a topping.  These ideas are interesting, but they aren’t our topic.  Today, I’m going to talk about how to get your raw pizza dough into the oven.

This can be hard, unless you have a screen that you’re building your pizza on (and unless you’ve done hours in a pizza restaurant, I’m not even sure why you would know what one is, but if you do, and you have one, and you use it, no tip this week!).  But there is an easy little trick that has worked for us like a charm ever since we started making pizza.

Friday!  And this Friday leads the masses out of Los Angeles and leaves us with the quiet city all to ourselves…

But I digress.  Today’s tip is a piece of sheer genius that I found somewhere – quite possibly Cook’s Illustrated.  Lots of recipes call for a small amount of tomato paste, usually a tablespoon or two.  Cans of tomato paste are never that small (I think they would be impossible to open if they were), which inevitably means leftover paste.  You can circumvent this problem by purchasing a tube of tomato paste, which is quite convenient, but much more expensive than a can.*  Ninjas are thrifty creatures and just can’t stand to pass up an opportunity to save a little money.  So we buy the cans, but that leaves the pesky problem of what to do with the other six tablespoons of tomato paste…

One of the keys to eating cheaply (and well) is eating everything you buy.  This inevitably means leftovers and leftovers can lead to food boredom, which is perilous for anyone trying to be careful with their food budget.

There are many compelling reasons for not wasting food, but our number one reason around here is that we are…chea…er…thrifty.  Not throwing out uneaten food saves on both food budget and, if you’re unfortunate enough to have to pay for your garbage pickup, waste bills as well.  But eating the same thing for days in a row gets really tedious, even if you are making things that are delicious.  How to combat the evils of food boredom?  By reusing your leftovers to create something new!